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Memoir Lessons: Buddies, Endings, and Beyond

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by Jerry Waxler

Read how our collective interest in turning life into story is changing the world, one story at a time.

After you live for a few decades, you look back and find you have learned many lessons from your own School of Hard Knocks. When you read a memoir you have the privilege of attending someone else’s school, learning what they learned, gaining some of their wisdom. You can look back on their experience, too, and learn more from it in retrospect than you learned the first time.

In this post, I wrap up the last of the twenty lessons I found in Beth Kephart’s Slant of Sun. I have delved into this enjoyable, well-written book, a process I have grown accustomed to. After reading a memoir, I go back and consider it again. I hope you will do the same. By studying the lessons that other people learned in their School of Hard Knocks, you will gain the skill and courage to offer readers an insider look at your own.

Slant of Sun is a great example of a buddy book!

A mom loves her only son. They hang out together and share many, many hours. She is constantly trying to understand him. But this memoir is not a biography of him. It is about their relationship. He is important in relation to her and vice versa. They are buddies.

I notice certain, noteworthy features of books in which the protagonist is tightly focused on one other character. In addition to understanding each individual, you are also learning about the way they relate to each other. The relationship becomes a sort of third character. Look at how close these two are. He actually emerged from her body, and relies on her every minute, as intimate as a relationship can be. Slant of Sun focuses so tightly on this one other character, she subtitled the book One Child’s Courage.

Notes
Another example of a buddy book is Courage to Walk about Robert Waxler’s love and concern for his adult son. When I first read Courage to Walk I was surprised by the author’s attempt to get inside his son’s head. Now, after reading “Slant of Sun” I see the similarity. Obsessing on your child’s thoughts is part of being a parent.

Two more examples of buddy memoirs involve non-human friends: Alex and Me about Irene Pepperberg’s relationship with a parrot, and Marley and Me about John Grogan’s relationship with his dog.

Some relationship books show the dark side of interpersonal connections. Consider the destructive relationship between Leslie Morgan Steiner and her abusive husband in Crazy Love.

Writing Prompt
What individual in your life might make a strong character that would carry a chapter, or two, or an entire book? Try writing that person’s profile and a description of the relationship. What was your connection? How close were you? How did you treat each other? How much did you think about that person?

Denouement

At the end of a story, the author’s job is to build a bridge to help the reader return from the world inside the book back out into the real world. This last segment is called the denouement. The end of memoirs can sometimes be a lesson learned, or a segue forward in time, taking the narrator from the younger life in the memoir out into the life of the memoir writer.

In Beth Kephart’s denouement, she shares her concern about the medical, family and community response to children in Jeremy’s situation, and the difficulties for a young mother of a child with special needs. Despite the fact that she isn’t an expert, I welcome her views. In my opinion, she has earned the right to speak authoritatively about the child mental health care system.

Many memoir authors take advantage of the denouement to offer lessons that have resulted from experience. At the beginning of the memoir, Here if You Need Me Kate Braestrup loses her husband in a freak auto accident. During the following years, she goes to school to become a minister, and then works for the Maine State Game Wardens, helping comfort survivors of deadly accidents and crimes. By the end of the book, Braestrup earns the right to draw conclusions about the most profound topics of good and evil, life and death.

In Three Little Words, Ashley Rhodes Courter describes her upbringing in the foster care system. By the end, she is speaking to groups to help raise awareness about improving the foster care system.

Writing Prompt
What conclusion have you drawn from the experiences in your memoir? Write a synopsis of these lessons, and consider if they might work at the end of your book, to share with readers things that they might be able to use. This “lessons learned” ending is especially relevant if you intend to give talks to audiences who might be interested in applying your experience in their own lives.

People age. Books don’t.

When I read Slant of Sun I was bonding with Beth and her son in an earlier time frame. Which is a strange bit of time travel, because it is 15 years later, and their lives have moved on. When I ask her questions about the book, in the interview which I will post next, I can feel her striving valiantly to return to that earlier time. Unlike a fiction writer, who can leave her characters behind, a memoir writer continues to live with her characters, forever.

Last year I read Zlata’s Diary by Zlata Filopovic. She was 11 when she was catapulted to fame by the diary she kept of her experience in the war in Sarajevo. Ten years later, when I read the book, she was in college. I reached out to ask her a few questions and she politely declined. She wanted to grow up.

Even though we aspiring memoir writers cannot see the future, and don’t know what it will feel like to publish a book that captures a part of ourselves, these are good questions to ask yourself. Once a memoir is out in the world, you will have to live with it for a long time. As another memoir author, Bill Strickland, (Ten Points) told me in an interview, that someone came up to him and started talking about his past. The first time it happened he was horrified by the intrusion. Then he remembered, “No wonder they know. I told them.”

Writing Prompt
Write an imaginative story about what it will feel like in ten years when a reader asks you about a passage in your ten year-old memoir.

You’re neither too old nor too young

You don’t have to be old to write a memoir. Beth Kephart was in her thirties when she wrote hers. Another of my favorite memoirs, Publish This Book was written by 24 year old, Stephen Markeley. And don’t worry about being too old, either. The Invisible Wall was written by 93 year-old Harry Bernstein. Forget your age. Write the story.

Here are links to all the parts of my multi-part review of Slant of Sun by Beth Kephart and an interview with the author:

Use this memoir as a study guide: lessons 1 to 3

Lessons 4-5 from Beth Kephart’s Memoir, Slant of Sun

Four More Writing Lessons from Reading a Memoir

Memoir Lessons: Mysteries of emerging consciousness

Memoir Lessons: Moms, Quirks, Choices

Lessons from Kephart: Labels, Definitions, Language

Memoir Lessons: Buddies, Endings, and Beyond

Interview with Beth Kephart

Links
Visit Beth Kephart’s Blog
Amazon page for “A Slant of Sun: One Child’s Courage” by Beth Kephart

More memoir writing resources

To see brief descriptions and links to all the essays on Memory Writers Network, click here.

To order my step-by-step how-to guide to write your memoir, click here.

Lessons from Kephart: Labels, Definitions, Language

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by Jerry Waxler

When Beth Kephart’s son was diagnosed with a vague “disorder” she had to cope with the news. But how do you make sense of information that affects people you love when it is so technical you can barely understand it? You must sort out more than jargon. This is your son, and you must take into account the leanings of your heart. Later, returning to the scene as a memoir writer, you must search for words that will convey these emotional, and sometimes even philosophical struggles. To help you sort out your own story, consider the way Beth Kephart tells hers.

Technical Definition Informs the Story

After many exams and interviews, Jeremy received his diagnosis. He had “Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified. (PDDNOS)” Such an obscure, clinical sounding term might seem out of place in a memoir about a child. But Kephart includes it, and even quotes the exact definition in the psychiatric manual, DSM III.

This critical technical diagnosis is so important in the lives of Beth and Jeremy Kephart that the book could have been subtitled, “My son’s PDDNOS, and what I did about it.” I’m glad she didn’t shy away from this technical detail. Now I know one more piece of her puzzle, and if I meet a child afflicted with this condition, I’m better informed.

Writing Prompt
Perhaps at first glance, the technical details of your situation might seem obscure and unimportant to anyone but you. But sometimes, these nonfiction tidbits can be valuable additions that help readers understand you and your world. Perhaps you garden and you worry about the chemical makeup of the soil, or you are a birdwatcher and you had an interaction with a wonderful creature. If it was important to you, it could be important to us. Consider sharing the technical name or description.

Philosophy of everyday life: “I will not confuse my son with a label.”

Sometimes a diagnosis helps you find a treatment. If you know you have appendicitis, you can switch from antacids to surgery. But sometimes a diagnosis confines you in a prison without a door. This is why Beth Kephart rails against the diagnosis “PDDNOS” being applied to her son. She refuses to be limited by this strange-sounding label.

“All those labels? Which one is the one? Which one fits? I turn and look at Jeremy and his radiant beauty, try to side with one or the other of the decrees. All I see is his giftedness, his otherworldly qualities, how even in the fit of a dream, he’s reached for me, grabbed my finger with his hand. I see his black hair and his feathered eyelids and I am reminded about acts of mercy, how God sent him, this saintly creature, into the clutter of my home. As if I deserved anything nearly this gorgeous. As if I would know what to do when he arrived.”

In a sense this is the core of her entire memoir. She strives at every step to see him as a unique, elaborate being, not a simple category. Throughout the book she seems to be making the case that love transcends labels, that when you love someone you see their individuality.

Weirdly, this exact point is what makes memoirs so powerful. Memoirs go deep inside the individual uniqueness of their author’s life. Every memoir is the author’s attempt to transcend labels, and to elaborate on the scope of an entire, complex, unique human being.

Writing Prompt
What label has cornered you, or someone you love? Show a scene in which the label hurt you, and show how you fought against that limitation.

In the next post, I will offer the last of my list of 20 lessons based on “Slant of Sun.”

Links
Visit Beth Kephart’s Blog
Amazon page for “A Slant of Sun: One Child’s Courage” by Beth Kephart

Here are links to all the parts of my multi-part review of “Slant of Sun” by Beth Kephart and an interview with the author:

Use this memoir as a study guide: lessons 1 to 3

Lessons 4-5 from Beth Kephart’s Memoir, Slant of Sun

Four More Writing Lessons from Reading a Memoir

Memoir Lessons: Mysteries of emerging consciousness

Memoir Lessons: Moms, Quirks, Choices

Lessons from Kephart: Labels, Definitions, Language

Memoir Lessons: Buddies, Endings, and Beyond

Interview with Beth Kephart

More memoir writing resources

To see brief descriptions and links to all the essays on Memory Writers Network, click here.

To order my step-by-step how-to guide to write your memoir, click here.

Memoir Lessons: Moms, Quirks, Choices

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by Jerry Waxler

Mothers supposedly have instincts that tell them exactly how to raise their child. But we all know situations in which the child presents problems that exceed the mother’s grasp. At what moment does she decide that her own resources are not sufficient? It’s a profound question I would have never considered before reading this memoir, about the author’s search for insight, search for help. Here are three more lessons about memoir writing, in my series of 20 that I learned from “Slant of Sun” by Beth Kephart.

Intimate look at a mother’s relationship with child psychology (non-fiction bonus)

Child psychologists are the ones in our society who offer training and expertise, and so, when pushed to the limit, Beth Kephart goes to ask them to help. And yet, she resists them, afraid they may try to bring a cold clinical analysis to her precious individual baby. In scenes filled with suspense and compassion, she explains her situation to the psychologist. What a beautiful, loving compassionate scene she portrays about a mother’s worry and fretting about these difficulties mothers face when seeking help.

This is not just cold clinical material. This is personal and intimate. When Kephart takes Jeremy for psychological testing she tries to protect him from the psychologists. Then she wants to coach the testers to let them know that he is not just any ordinary boy. Her desires, fears and other details of the visits can help other moms in the situation. In fact, Slant of Sun could be a mini-handbook about what to do if your child needs psychological help.

Writing Prompt
I have read books about the anxiety people face when waiting for heart surgery. (Hands Across my Heart by Perry Foster. The wall between mother and baby during post-partum depression (Down Came the Rain, by Brooke Shields), and the life and death battle against breast cancer (Sky begins at your Feet Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, and Healing with Words by Diana Raab). By sharing  emotional and technical details, these books offer strength and instruction to readers. What non-fiction bonus information from your life experience might benefit your readers? You might think your experience was mundane, but by writing about it in detail, you can help people understand what you were going through and offer them strength to face their own situations.

Surprising variety of inner worlds

Over the last few years, there is an increasing understanding that disorders related to Autism come in degrees. Many symptoms now fall under the broad umbrella of “The Spectrum.” People on the Spectrum tend to hyperfocus on tasks. They have a hard time letting go of their fascination with thoughts and mental images. In extreme case, these tendencies are anti-social, making it difficult for these people to form relationships or work in organizations. In milder cases, or when a person has learned how to direct their attention, these qualities can be valuable. Successful artists, scientists, and business people are able to focus intensely and ignore distractions.

“Slant of Sun” offers a wonderful, warm glimpse into the early childhood of a boy who is on the Spectrum, offering an example of the surprising variations that can take place in people with these traits.

Writing Prompt
The way we think is uniquely our own, and a memoir is a perfect opportunity to explore the unique aspects of yourself that play out inside your own mind. Consider ways your thought process differs from other people. Obviously you have no direct evidence, but over the course of years, you have heard hints that you are more or less competitive, more or less artistic, more or less obsessive, and so on. By paying attention to these differences, you can offer a portrayal of your character that will let your readers see you as individual and unique.

Search for a special school

When Beth needed to find the right school for her child, her hunt was more than casual. It was crucial for her son’s future. She researched. She asked friends and acquaintances for recommendations. Her account gives an in-depth look at interviewing school officials, letting us feel their attitude towards children with special needs.

Kephart’s urgent search for a specialized school could be generalized to a broader set of circumstances. Finding the right school is an important milestone on many journeys. When we look for the right college, or camp, or job, or therapist, we are lining up forces that will influence our future. After we enter that particular the situation, we will be governed by its rules and rulers. To influence our future, we have a great responsibility to effectively evaluate the institution we’re heading towards.

Writing Prompt
What sort of search have you conducted in order to locate and accepted by the “right” school, mentor, or training situation?

In following blog posts I will continue the list of lessons that I drew from “Slant of Sun” and suggestions for you, as well.

Links
Visit Beth Kephart’s Blog
Amazon page for “A Slant of Sun: One Child’s Courage” by Beth Kephart

Here are links to all the parts of my multi-part review of “Slant of Sun” by Beth Kephart and an interview with the author:

Use this memoir as a study guide: lessons 1 to 3

Lessons 4-5 from Beth Kephart’s Memoir, Slant of Sun

Four More Writing Lessons from Reading a Memoir

Memoir Lessons: Mysteries of emerging consciousness

Memoir Lessons: Moms, Quirks, Choices

Lessons from Kephart: Labels, Definitions, Language

Memoir Lessons: Buddies, Endings, and Beyond

Interview with Beth Kephart

More memoir writing resources

To see brief descriptions and links to all the essays on Memory Writers Network, click here.

To order my step-by-step how-to guide to write your memoir, click here.

Memoir Lessons: Mysteries of emerging consciousness

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by Jerry Waxler

Beth Kephart has a knack for generously sharing the way she sees the world, not only observing what goes on outside, but also letting us in to her inner world, as well. In fact, a good deal of the power of her memoir “Slant of Sun” lies in her obsession to know as much about what goes on inside her son’s mind as her own. Learning about inner worlds is a good reason to read “Slant of Sun,” and might be a good reason for someone to read your memoir. Here are two more lessons, from my series on things you can learn about memoir writing from “Slant of Sun.”

Emergence of Language and Self-awareness

Beth is worried about her son’s incessant pacing. In fact, she is terrified. Psychologists warn her that if she lets him have his way, the obsessions will take deep root and will control him forever. But when she tries to stop him from pacing he panics, fights, and struggles, desperate to continue. She doesn’t know whether to trust the experts or listen to her love. Later, when he is old enough to speak, he says to her, “I need to pace long enough to finish the movie that is playing in my mind.” His explanation relieves some profound desire to understand him. The first wave of relief is hers, but in the process, she gives the same gift to the reader. I am so grateful to him (and her) for helping me understand how such a compulsion could be explained in simple terms. It is a stunning example of the birth of a child’s language, the birth of introspective explanation.

Writing Prompt
Jeremy was using his words to explain his actions, and that’s what memoir writers do, too. Your whole memoir is an attempt to describe how your life works, from inside your point of view. Go deep and stay fresh and amaze your readers with descriptions of your inner life the way Jeremy explained his actions to his mom.

Spirituality of a child

Jeremy wants to see God, and cries and begs his mother to explain how this will ever happen. Then he realizes that he has upset her, and he switches from concern about himself to concern about her. The scene ends with him trying to console her, telling her that it’s okay if she doesn’t know the answer yet.

This scene made me wonder if children might be closer to God. After all, they did recently emerge into the world. Perhaps they remember a little about what it’s like over there. And if they do, then perhaps occasionally their mothers open up to that awareness, as well. In a beautifully written scene, Beth Kephart lets us participate in just such an event. When Jeremy shares his fantasy world with his mother, she leans in closer and closer, until for a moment she pops over into an altered consciousness. It’s a compelling instance of that transcendent state described in religious and spiritual accounts and in some memoirs.

Another glimpse of a mystical experience with a child is in Martha Beck’s “Expecting Adam” about her Down Syndrome son. In Matthew Polly’s memoir, “American Shaolin,” he explores the possibility that transported moments are more common than we realize. Memoirs could open a door to these hidden moments.

Writing Prompt
Write about an imaginative or transcendent experience, for example when you were a child or with a child. Such a scene might be hard to remember, since I believe most of us file them away in dark corners, with the label “never tell this to anyone.” Following Kephart’s example, retrieve one of those silent memories, and turn it into words.

In following blog posts I will continue the list of lessons that I drew from “Slant of Sun” and suggestions for you, as well.

Links
Visit Beth Kephart’s Blog
Amazon page for “A Slant of Sun: One Child’s Courage” by Beth Kephart

Here are links to all the parts of my multi-part review of “Slant of Sun” by Beth Kephart and an interview with the author:

Use this memoir as a study guide: lessons 1 to 3

Lessons 4-5 from Beth Kephart’s Memoir, Slant of Sun

Four More Writing Lessons from Reading a Memoir

Memoir Lessons: Mysteries of emerging consciousness

Memoir Lessons: Moms, Quirks, Choices

Lessons from Kephart: Labels, Definitions, Language

Memoir Lessons: Buddies, Endings, and Beyond

Interview with Beth Kephart

More memoir writing resources

To see brief descriptions and links to all the essays on Memory Writers Network, click here.

To order my step-by-step how-to guide to write your memoir, click here.

Lessons 4-5 from Beth Kephart’s Memoir, Slant of Sun

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by Jerry Waxler

After reading Beth Kephart’s “Slant of Sun,” I kept finding more reasons to like it. Here are two more that can be used not only to appreciate her memoir but to give you tips to enhance your own.

Astoundingly cool word choice, and language arts.

I can’t say for sure why I fell so hard in love with Beth Kephart’s memoir “Slant of Sun” but certainly her language arts played an important role. How do you pick just the right word, or as the French say “Le mot juste.” (And while I’m thinking of it, why do the French have a phrase for everything?) Anyway, picking fabulous words seems to be a knack that has helped Beth Kephart convey her inner reality to her readers. And isn’t that exactly the challenge? We need to find the right words to tell our story, but which words?

Consider these examples:

“If I now walk the house at midnight among the tittering gossip of my obligations and fears, I also walk beneath a child’s artful dreaming.” Pg 29

Referring to the roots she has worked to develop for so long, she says, “And yet — finally sprouted with family — I have found myself longing for wind. Ungraciously longing to be swept sparse and stemless through the storm of the sky, to be dropped down rootless in a place I cannot name.” Pg 104

I know it’s not easy to develop this knack, but a book like “Slant of Sun” renew my determination to increase the freshness of my language arts. (By the way, the title itself is a double entendre (another French expression!) “Slant of Sun” and “Slant of Son.”)

Writing Prompt
Sometimes when writing in my journal, a turn of phrase pops out. I usually dismiss it as too outlandish for ordinary discourse.  Thanks to Kephart’s example, I see that well-controlled flights of word play can embellish prose and make it more exciting and entertaining. Consider looking at your own turns of phrase with the kind of freedom she does. What, if any of them, could be used in your outward facing material to offer the reader a fresh way to think about your situation. (Also, consider taking a poetry course to vitalize your relationship with words.)

Techniques: Pacing and suspense

Typically we associate suspense with thrillers or murder mysteries, but this emotion is crucial in all stories, which must draw the reader from page to page with a sense of anticipation. In many scenes in “Slant of Sun,” I feel an edgy concern to know what is going to happen next. I hear a door slam or a train go by, or Mom commands Jeremy to sit still while she tells him just one story. I worry how he will respond. What if her story can’t pull him away from his obsessions. What if he panics? She has turned her relationship with her son into a psychological thriller.  To find the answer, I must turn the page.

Writing Prompt
Suspense is one of the fundamental emotions of drama, and so as you develop your story, look for ways to play with suspense the way Kephart does. Pick a scene, and instead of jumping right to the outcome, build up to it. Remember how you felt while you were still worried, still anticipating. Did you discuss your fears with other people, or muse about the possibilities? Pause, anticipate, feel heart racing. Note the tension. Let my heart pound, too.

In following blog posts I will continue the list of lessons that I drew from Slant of Sun and offer suggestions for you, as well.

Links
Visit Beth Kephart’s Blog
Amazon page for “A Slant of Sun: One Child’s Courage” by Beth Kephart

Here are links to all the parts of my multi-part review of “Slant of Sun” by Beth Kephart and an interview with the author:

Use this memoir as a study guide: lessons 1 to 3

Lessons 4-5 from Beth Kephart’s Memoir, Slant of Sun

Four More Writing Lessons from Reading a Memoir

Memoir Lessons: Mysteries of emerging consciousness

Memoir Lessons: Moms, Quirks, Choices

Lessons from Kephart: Labels, Definitions, Language

Memoir Lessons: Buddies, Endings, and Beyond

Interview with Beth Kephart

More memoir writing resources

To see brief descriptions and links to all the essays on Memory Writers Network, click here.

To order my short, step-by-step how-to guide to write your memoir, click here.

Use this memoir as a study guide: lessons 1 to 3

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by Jerry Waxler

In the memoir “Slant of Sun,” a mother notices her child is more withdrawn than other kids. He sits alone for hours arranging toy cars, and furiously resists new situations and people. Jeremy is Beth Kephart’s first child. She is madly in love with him, and thinks everything he does is wonderful, but soon she realizes he needs to move along.

Her journey to help her son enter the game of life abounds with courage, psychological sleuthing, and love. It is a warm coming of age story of two people: Jeremy’s development into childhood, and his mother’s maturity as the shepherd of her son. I learned so much from reading the book that I think it would make an excellent self-study or teacher-led training manual for memoir writers. In this and the following posts, I share 20 lessons I learned from the book, and offer suggestions about how you can apply these ideas to your own memoir.

Truth in memoirs, Part 1. Sincere voice

One of the reasons I dove so enthusiastically into Slant of Sun is because of Beth Kephart’s voice. All the components of her written voice, her choice of words, phrases, and sentences, make me feel like I’ve known her for years. If my best friend told me a story, I wouldn’t put up any walls of doubt. Nor would I resist this author’s story. Her ease and spontaneity draws me into her world.

Writing Prompt
An authentic, sincere voice is an important goal for any memoir writer. But voice is a subtle quality without specific rules. Here’s one exercise: write an anecdote as if you were telling a best friend. Or call a friend, and turn on the recorder while you tell them your anecdote. Then look for phrases in your speech that might add a sense of intimacy to the written version. Another exercise is to write the same anecdote in your journal as if it was only for you. Look for intimacies in your private version that might make the public version more personal and believable.

Truth in Memoirs Part 2: Messy Emotions and Self Reflection

Another way memoirs convince us of their authenticity is through a sort of organic messiness. When Beth Kephart shares her worries, confusions, thoughts and daydreams, she takes me deeper into her psyche than I would expect in a fictional character. Fictional characters are sometimes wonderful and deep, but I know they only go as far as the author’s imagination. Real characters go on and on, into the depth and breadth of real life. I want the memoir to let me see the lack of boundaries, to show me the infinitude of individuality. The entire book is one big example of this principle. Here are a couple of passages that show her humanity, sharing her motherly obsession about her son’s thinking process.

“when Jeremy stares at length at the pictures in books, at the fire trucks and, increasingly, at the cars on the floor, at the mix of light radiating in through the window, [I want to believe] it’s poetry he’s thinking about. Something too resplendent to share.” [Pg 51]

“Without an obsession he’s forlorn and empty. He gets tangled in his tasks at home. He forgets to look us in the eye. It doesn’t occur to him to start a conversation. He gives fewer lectures. He’s less engaged in what we’re saying.” [Pg 111]

Writing Prompt
Instead of trying to polish your emotions, reveal their rough edges. Consider times when you worried without basis, or did something that made you feel flaky. Share these errors with your readers. The imperfection or spontaneity of your inner reality helps readers relate to you. Counter-intuitive though it may be, your flaws can give your character more authority, rather than less.

Some astonishingly vivid, unique visual images,

Mother and son go shopping for a hat and Jeremy selects a big green one. He loves it so much he demands she buy it. Then he refuses to take it off. People comment on how inappropriate it looks. Someone points to the hat and makes a gesture pulling a knife across the throat indicating “kill it.” On the cover of the book, there is even a wonderful photo of a boy wearing a bright green hat. Another beautiful visual object in the book was a hand crafted wooden car. I can see its “buttery surfaces” in the palm of the kind man who made it for Jeremy.

Writing Prompt
Describe a particular object that had meaning for you.

In following blog posts I will continue the list of lessons that I drew from Slant of Sun and suggestions for you, as well.

Links
Visit Beth Kephart’s Blog
Amazon page for “A Slant of Sun: One Child’s Courage” by Beth Kephart

Here are links to all the parts of my multi-part review of “Slant of Sun” by Beth Kephart and an interview with the author:

Use this memoir as a study guide: lessons 1 to 3

Lessons 4-5 from Beth Kephart’s Memoir, Slant of Sun

Four More Writing Lessons from Reading a Memoir

Memoir Lessons: Mysteries of emerging consciousness

Memoir Lessons: Moms, Quirks, Choices

Lessons from Kephart: Labels, Definitions, Language

Memoir Lessons: Buddies, Endings, and Beyond

Interview with Beth Kephart

More memoir writing resources

To see brief descriptions and links to all the essays on Memory Writers Network, click here.

To order my short, step-by-step how-to guide to write your memoir, click here.

Celebrity Lessons for Writers

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by Jerry Waxler

I picture Steve Martin in dozens of situations. I’ve seen him tell jokes on talk shows, woo a woman in the movie “Roxanne,” and anxiously fuss over his daughter in “Father of the Bride.” The more I think about Steve Martin, the more I remember him. It feels like we have been hanging out together for years. So when I heard about his memoir, “Born Standing Up,” I should have jumped for joy. But instead, my impulse was to run away. One reason for this aversion is that I prefer the lives of “ordinary” people. Another reason is that I’ve been burned.

Years ago I purchased a memoir by Ruth Gordon, an actress whose performances enchanted me in movies like “Harold and Maude.” I looked forward to reading more about her, but the prose was so boring, the situations so leaden, I actually returned the book for a refund. From that experience I formed the prejudice that celebrity memoirs are on the shelf because the author is famous, not because the book is good.

My conclusion was based on a sample size of one, hardly an impressive scientific test. Furthermore, famous people exert enormous power in our culture, and unless I break down and read their memoirs, I’m going to remain ignorant about them. So when an online friend suggested that Steve Martin’s “Born Standing Up” was authentic and introspective I decided to give it a try. It turned out to be an excellent book about a boy’s climb from ordinary childhood to international fame.

Desire, Effort, Sacrifice

When Martin was a child, he looked at the stage and knew he wanted to be on it. At first he thought he could achieve success by performing magic acts. Later he incorporated comedy into his routine and then banjo playing. Basically, he didn’t care what he did, as long as he performed. Of course, reaching the stage was only the beginning. To be invited back, he had to learn how to please audiences. It was a long journey.

Writing Prompt

Consider your own life achievements. What sacrifices and hardships did you make in order to achieve some greatly desired goals?

Writers want to reach the public, too

Most writers think they will be finished when they type the last word. They seldom anticipate the public leg of their journey. And yet, to succeed we must reach out to readers. Many memoir writers are interviewed on radio, speak at meetings, and greet people at book signings. People want to learn more about us. So we writers need to face audiences gladly, learn to please them, and damp down our sensitivity to the weird mix of scrutiny, criticism, and indifference.

Hardly any of us will become famous in the way Steve Martin is, and yet his memoir provides insight into our situation. Like so many successful artists and performers, Steve Martin claims his fame had more to do with persistence than talent. He relentlessly pursued public attention, and refused to accept defeat. Week after week, he found an open microphone or a low paying gig, stood in front of the crowd, failed miserably, tried to learn from his experience, and did it again.

Famous writers often tell similar stories. Stephen King persisted despite many rejections, and I’m beginning to believe that willingness to reach for the public is indeed the entry fee. Martin sought fame as if his life depended on it. It makes a good story. His desire established the momentum. We accompany him through those years as he tried to fulfill that desire despite seemingly impossible odds.

As writers, we need to develop this dramatic tension in the stories we write. And to succeed, we also need to follow the dramatic tension in real life. By following our desire, we make choices and take chances that lead us further towards our dream of communicating with readers.

Writing prompt

What tenacious drive did you follow? Making babies.. your career.. your art or sport? Write a scene of rejection or failure, and show how you picked up and kept going.

Even spectacular success becomes just another chapter in a long life

His fame grew so large he was performing in large halls where he was barely visible from the back. And yet, surprisingly, even during this period of exploding fame, he continued to experience terrible anxiety attacks, private hells he can’t really describe. He was intensely lonely and scared much of the time.

Then Martin walked away from comedy and shifted to movie making. He says he never looked back. He even claims he forgot about those years when he was trying so hard to earn a living by making people laugh. Considering how much psychological pain he suffered during this period, it makes sense that he would forget it when he moved on to the next chapter in his life. Later, when he tried to write about it, this period came into focus and took its rightful place in the whole journey of being Steve Martin.

This is an excellent example of the way life really works. When we move on to a new challenge, a new city or relationship or career, we often have trouble remembering the old one. We don’t even know we’ve forgotten. The years are simply gone. By writing we can re-integrate those lost parts, making ourselves more whole.

Did it for you dad

Martin’s story includes a tragic portrayal of his relationship to his father. He could never please his dad, and so he kept wondering what he could do to impress the old man. When his dad was close to death, Martin reached out to him and said, “I did it for you, dad.” Then turning to the reader he says, “I should have said, ‘I did it because of you.'” In other words, he became a successful comedian in order to break past his dad’s relentless disapproval.

By sharing this intimate moment, Martin proves the point that celebrities are people. The work of a memoir is to offer that humanity to readers. And so, I’m glad I read this book about a celebrity, who was also a real human being, who wanted the same things I want, and who was later willing to take the time to go back, organize those experiences and share them with me in his memoir.

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Please comment about your best or worst celebrity memoir, or your experience with tenacity.

Note
Another memoir “Enter Talking” by Joan Rivers also highlights the shocking tenacity needed to go from obscurity to fame. She also endured years of hardship and rejection. To read my essay about Joan Rivers‘ tale, click here.

Clown story inspires six writing prompts

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by Jerry Waxler

Reading gives me pleasure in a variety of ways, from humor, imagery, story impact, and the lessons I learn about life and about writing. Consider Sean Toner’s award-winning “Head Clown,” a story about a summer when he decided to earn extra money by selling balloons. This piece, fashioned from ordinary events, is clever, engaging, and warm. I looked more closely trying to decipher how he transformed a few memories into a tale that offered so much value. From my inquiry I found six writing prompts that could help any writer find a story-worthy anecdote in their own memory.

To read the whole story, click Webdelsol’s site.

To read my essay about what I learned from Sean Toner’s style click here.

1) Micro-recounting – slow time down and dig in

If you take a panoramic view of a savannah, you see wildebeests, giraffes, prairies, and trees. Then kneel down and look at the soil. It is teeming with tiny ants, spiders, and roots so small you only see them by staring carefully. Observations at both scales can help you understand your world.

This is one of Toner’s most interesting knacks. He focuses on human interaction at a microscopic level. By applying his stylistic writing, Toner expands, explores, and playfully develops the psychological sensation embedded in each moment.

Writing Prompt
Pick an experience you are willing to micro-observe. Play around with the variety of details in that instant. What look crossed a person’s face? What noise did you hear across the street? What observation could you make about the room, the sounds and smells, the people. Then insert some of these observations in your narrative.

2) Allow the location to generate drama

“Head Clown” is set in a resort town, a location I have always found intriguing. I try to imagine the locals who wake up to go to work, surrounded by people who are sleeping in and then heading to the beach. Toner paints other sites with an intriguing flair, cranking up my interest in the bookstore where he works and the house where the clowns meet to replenish their supply of balloons. Mystery writer P.D. James says in her memoir “Time to Be in Earnest” that a good location creates a wonderful image and mood for a story. Sean Toner’s passionate, detailed description of place provides just such a rich backdrop.

Writing prompt
Read one of your anecdotes, and look for an opportunity to insert a sentence or two that adds a haunting or interesting touch to the location.

3) Periods when you were in-between

Sean had recently graduated college. That period of life was finished but he didn’t know what to do next. He was between college and career, between decision and indecision. The story takes place during summer, a notoriously unstructured period for kids.  Each day heads in no particular direction, full of freedom and possibility, that is just as likely to lead to boredom as to excitement. The contrast between freedom and lack of direction pervades “Head Clown,” conveying a not-knowing that cries out for resolution.

Writing Prompt
What periods in your life were “in between?” Like Head Clown, consider your summers, as well as the period before you settled in to routine adulthood, or any other period when you felt an absence of direction. Search within those periods for the makings of a story.

4) Lonely and looking

Toner is lonely, and his ineffectual attempts at romance raise another opportunity for tension. He superbly portrays his unique struggle, an awkwardness that awakens my empathy and reminds me of my own shy, clumsy beginnings.

Writing Prompt
Write about a time or anecdote when you felt disconnected and lonely, unsure of romantic contact.

5) Masquerading as a search for identity

By dressing in a costume, Toner was literally clowning around with his identity. The big shoes, big nose, and wig create a comical image of his search for himself. Masquerading seems like a specialized feature of this story. But it pervades our world so thoroughly we forget what we’re seeing. In movies and on television shows, actors talk to us through their make up and costumes. Look at Shakespeare’s plays. The characters bend and twist their identity, caught in the tension between internal and external truth.

All of us have dressed for a role, whether we suited up for a first date, a job interview, or to impress the future in-laws. At times we may have changed hair styles, glasses or contact lenses, or surgically adjusted our face. Most of us donned costumes to beg for candy at Halloween or to attend a party. Dressing up is powerful because external experiments let us explore the way people see us and the way we see ourselves.

Writing Prompt
How have variations in your appearance affected you? (Clothing, hair, glasses, shape.) What changed in the way you felt about yourself? What did you imagine about the way other people saw you? Do blonds have more fun? Do clothes make the man? What worked? What didn’t? Generate a few anecdotes from your memory about times when you made such changes, and how it changed your inner or outer world.

6) Authentic sharing generates reader empathy

Sean Toner’s klutziness, uncertainty, and vulnerability all add to the intimacy of his character. His flaws make me feel connected with him. When I try to understand why flaws should be attractive, I realize the flaws themselves are not the reason for my empathy. What draws me closer to him is his heroic struggle to describe himself and his world.

Even if everything is going wrong in his life, his effort has created an exquisite relationship between teller and listener. Sharing the story sets both of us on high ground, as we look across the events and see how it all played out. Sean Toner has provided a sort of safe place from which to view the messiness of life.

So even though you’re telling about a time when you looked bad, the act of telling about it makes you look good, counterbalancing or neutralizing the pettiness, embarrassment or “wrongness” of the original event.

Writing Prompt
Choose a weakness you want to report about yourself. Experiment with revealing stories about this aspect of yourself. Imagine what your readers might think of your anecdote, or better still, ask critiquers to tell you. Do they think less or more of you?

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Click to visit Sean Toner’s Home Page

Link isolated anecdotes into a story with the power of your beliefs

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By Jerry Waxler

Read Memoir Revolution to learn why now is the perfect time to write your memoir.

A memoir starts with a single anecdote. Then another, and another. In our imagination, we know these events formed our life. But other people can’t read our imagination. They can only read what’s on the page. We must transform the anecdotes into a compelling story. The memoir writer’s job is to discover the binding that will bring the reader from one event to the next. One place to look for this continuity is in your beliefs. Beliefs are important. They influence our decisions and shape our mood and emotion. And yet few writing classes explore the impact of ideas and beliefs.

To see how ideas can influence a life, see my essay about the beliefs that changed Henry Louis Gates’ attitude towards girls. In today’s essay, I explore this strategy further by looking within a series of my own anecdotes for the underlying beliefs that could help pull them together into a story.

High School Trolley
My own school, Central High in Philadelphia, drew academically inclined boys from all over the city, so at the end of the day each of us went off in different directions. Sitting by myself on the trolley, a pack of boys piled in from a nearby Catholic High School. They all knew each other and they shouted and laughed far more boisterously than the studious kids I knew. Even though they never bullied me, nor did they seem to be bullying each other, I kept very still. When I reached my stop, I nonchalantly pulled the cord to signal the driver, and squeezed my way to the door. It slapped open and I stepped down, safe again on a quiet street in familiar territory.

Brainstorm underlying ideas
I look more closely at my thoughts and feelings in this scene. What can I learn about my trust in people, my fragile pride, my ethnic identity, and the way a city kid could feel vulnerable in a crowd, hoping to remain invisible.

Freshman year debate
In Freshman year, I was a thousand miles from home, living in a high-rise dormitory at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, a sprawling campus with thirty thousand students. Some upper classmen were visiting the dorm to debate the U.S. action in Vietnam, while the mainly freshman residents crowded in to the meeting room to listen. “The U.S. government is using Vietnam as an excuse to test its weapons. We shouldn’t be there.” “Oh, yeah? You’re a fool. If we don’t stop communism in Vietnam, it will spread and take over the world.”

I tried to find my own truth amidst their battle of ideas. I could barely keep up. How did these people know so much? And why were they filled with so much intensity? What did it all mean?

Sophomore Year
At the end of my freshman year, I went home to a quiet summer in Philadelphia, working as an assistant in a medical research lab, and working in my dad’s drugstore on weekends. In the fall, I returned to Madison. Amidst the hordes walking to and from class, I saw Kathy Bridgman, one of the only girls I had dated the previous year. The date didn’t go well. I had become so nervous I had to cut it short, and never went out with her again. Now, our eyes met, we smiled tentatively, and kept walking.

Walking with the crowd, I felt a  little lonely. Seeing Kathy tipped me off balance, reminding me of my social incompetence. How would I survive three more years?

Junior Year
A year later, in the fall of 1967, my hair in a frizzy mop, and sporting bushy sideburns, I approached a group of students who were gathering to block a classroom. By now, I had decided to join the protesters. Together we would alter the course of history. I crowded into a hallway of the Commerce Building, packed tightly, arms locked together. After we had been there for a while, police broke out the plate glass entry-way, stormed in and swung their clubs with force. Many students went to the hospital, including the girl who stood next to me. She needed emergency surgery for a ruptured uterus. The violence I had witnessed disturbed me. I had started out full of hope and ended more confused than ever.

What ideas drove me to protest? What other ideas drove the police to fight back with such violence? What happened to me, as my ideas shattered along with the day’s events?

Senior Year
For most of my senior year, I stayed alone in my apartment. Depressed, I skipped as many classes as possible. I was falling off the edge of my ambition, and collapsing into myself.

Search for the ideas
As these scenes first occurred to me, they seemed isolated. Now, by looking for continuity, I recognize the way crowds worked in my mind. I had always been fascinated by mobs in history. Now I could see that my academic curiosity was really about me. I was constantly looking for the balance between my desire to be inside a crowd, and my desire to be alone.

My Coming of Age was beset by this tension. In high school, I started out as a nerd, very much alone. Then at the university, I jumped in to crowds, deeper and deeper, until I felt stripped of my individuality. I lost my momentum and collapsed back into myself. Now, to collect the events and find a conclusion, I need to show how a more balanced understanding of groups redeemed me, filled me, and brought me back to life.

These anecdotes have not yet formed a story, but now I feel the dramatic tension that links one to the next, providing the seeds of an emotionally authentic and hopefully powerful tale, transforming isolated bits of memory into a story that will hold a reader’s attention from beginning to end.

Writing Prompt
Look at some of the anecdotes in your notebook. See if you can tease out the ideas that added power to each scene and linked it to the next. What additional background will offer the reader a greater understanding of your emotions and decisions?

More memoir writing resources

To see brief descriptions and links to all the essays on Memory Writers Network, click here.

To order Memoir Revolution about the powerful trend to create, connect, and learn, see the Amazon page for eBook or Paperback.

To order my step-by-step how-to guide to write your memoir, click here.

His Relationship to Girls Changed in this Scene

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By Jerry Waxler

Read Memoir Revolution to learn why now is the perfect time to write your memoir.

Henry Louis Gates grew up in a small town in West Virginia in the 1950s where he was taught he shouldn’t associate with girls until he married one. Then a fractured hip landed him in a hospital in a university town 60 miles away. During his protracted stay, with his leg suspended in traction, he was befriended by a minister who let him in on the good news that in some forms of Christianity, God and girls can peacefully coexist. By the time his hip healed, his mind had opened to a more liberal set of rules than the ones he had been taught as a child.

After I finished reading Gates’ memoir, “Colored People” I tried to understand why I related so empathetically with his life, and I kept returning to that scene in the hospital, which drew me in so vividly I felt I too had stopped by to encourage him to live as fully as possible. The more I think about the scene, the more power I find in it.

Distance
One thing that makes the scene memorable is the hospital’s distance from his home. He traveled far away to find wisdom, a story element that has echoes in many of the great stories of our culture, like Homer’s Odyssey, or the Wizard of Oz. I too left home, traveling a thousand miles away to college in order to find my own deeper meaning. So I feel an intuitive rapport with this notion that leaving town stimulates deeper thought.

Writing Prompt
What part of your memoir took place far from home? What realizations did you have on your journey?

Discomfort
His broken hip hurts, and his body is being stretched by traction. He also worries about falling behind in school, and wishes he was playing with his friends. These physical and emotional discomforts generate compassion, illustrating the lesson writing coaches have been telling me for years; discomfort and tension help readers relate to the protagonist.

When beginning memoir writers first explore memories, we may not know what to do with unsettling moments. Most of our lives we have skated around the regrets, traumas, weaknesses. But good memoir writing is different from the breezy overview you might tell a new acquaintance at a party. Memoir writing digs deeper, searching for the material that will convey an authentic account of your journey, complete with ups and downs.

Writing Prompt
In your own memoir, what scenes of physical or emotional pain can draw the reader in to caring about you?

Mysterious Strangers
Regular visits from kind, supportive adults brings this scene to life. A doctor realized how lonely Gates was, and stayed to play chess. A minister talked to him about religion and growing up. What a lovely gift these strangers offered Gates, not only giving him the comfort of companionship, but also helping him understand some things about life.

Writing Prompt
What advisors have helped you shift your beliefs? It could be a word from a stranger, as it was in Henry Louis Gates’ young life. Or an uncle, mentor, friend, teacher, or book. Write your ideas before you received the advice and after. Describe the scene when your idea-altering experience took place.

My writing example
I was working on a computer project at my first “real” dayjob at United Engineers. Then the project was canceled and I was crestfallen. A grizzled old engineer said to me, with a twinkle in his eye, “Nolo bastardo carborundum.” I looked puzzled. He said, “It’s fake-latin for ‘Don’t let the bastards wear you down.'” I roared with laughter, and discovered that with a little wisdom, a dash of humor, and the supporting hand of a fellow human being, you can get through situations that otherwise could make you miserable.

The impact ideas have on life
Before he went into the hospital, Gates believed that being around girls was the devil’s work. After talking to a visiting minister, he believed that God was fine with girls. This is an exciting example of the power of ideas. With hardly any external action, a change of mind profoundly influenced his goals and choices.

Ideas have always played an important role in my own life. In high school I believed I needed to accumulate knowledge in order to become an adult, so I studied hard. After a year in college, my idea changed. I believed it was up to me to fix the world, so I protested. By the end of those four years, my idea changed again. I believed that my actions didn’t have any influence on the world, and I collapsed into a tangle of despair. When I was 24, I stumbled upon a spiritually-oriented set of ideas that let me steer through the extremes. I believed what I did mattered to the people in my life, and that was enough to get me back on my feet and into the game of life. At each stage, my ideas affected the way I felt and the path I chose.

Yet, despite the crucial role that ideas played in my own life, I rarely hear them mentioned in writing courses. In this age of cinema and television, story writers are taught to focus on action. But that skips over one of the most important things in human experience, the way we think. Storytellers know the importance of the human thought-process, and for eons have been weaving their protagonist’s ideas into the action. Now I have to train myself to do the same.

I sift through piles of anecdotes. Taken one by one, these individual incidents do not add up to a compelling whole, so I look for the sequence that, like DNA encoding, binds isolated events together, maintaining forward motion while revealing inner truth. I believe to find the links between the episodes, we need to pay attention to our mental process.

Ideas told us what choices are available, and which ones are best. Ideas created the expectations of what was “supposed” to happen, and these expectations lead to our disappointment or joy. Ideas defined our judgment of other people. Discover within your ideas the forces that shaped you, and can shape the most compelling story.

Writing Prompt
Identify a few key ideas that drove you. Watch how they changed over time. For example, your religious ideas guide you through ethical choices. Your ideas about psychology helped you overcome barriers between people. Perhaps you decided to trust people instead of hate them, or realized that forgiveness helps the forgiver as much as the ‘forgivee.’ See if you can find specific moments or scenes when these ideas changed.

In a future essay, I’ll experiment with scenes from my own memory, and brainstorm ways that the scenes and the ideas interact.

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Note
For more about Henry Louis Gates’ contribution to African American Literature, try this link.

See the classic text on the relationship between beliefs and mental well being, “Existential Psychotherapy” by Irvin D. Yalom

For brief descriptions and links to all the posts on Memory Writers Network, click here.

To order Memoir Revolution about the powerful trend to create, connect, and learn, see the Amazon page for eBook or Paperback.

To order my how-to-get-started guide to write your memoir, click here.